While working on The Gates of Hell, Rodin experimented with the design of these two bas-reliefs and considered placing them at the bottom of each door. With their grieving heads, the panels represent the despair that results from a victory of passion over reason. The two pieces (modeled in plaster) were in place on The Gates during the 1890s, but Rodin removed them along with most of the other figures when he stripped the plaster version of the doors for exhibition in 1900. When the artist subsequently replaced many of the figures on The Gates, he did not include these bas-reliefs panels. Although their subject continued to resonate with the iconography of The Gates, the rectangular shape and symmetrical design no longer fit with the artist's free-flowing, almost chaotic composition.

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